Vis for Journalists Fall 2015 Lab/Assignment 4


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Out: Oct 6 2015, 9:30am. Due: Oct 13 2015, 9am
Updated: Oct 7 8:30pm

Materials

The Recreating News Visualizations in Tableau has three examples:

Assignment Summary

Assignment Part 1

In class we worked through two of the examples, the connected scatterplot and house prices.

For the assignment, work your way through the third example with small multiples drought data. Note that the data is already imported into the workbook and listed as a Data Source.

Submit a screenshot of your final version of the charts for the Drought's Footprint dataset, and a brief discussion of how you created them and any aspects that you struggled with.

There is no need to repeat any of the detailed information from the script, just reflect on how things went when you tried it. Also note that since we're telling you what to do for this one, I don't expect you to discuss the design rationale!

Update: The Drought's Footprints part of the assignment is now optional extra practice, not a mandatory requirement. If you'd like more practice, try recreating that graphic exactly, and then also make a new sheet where you modify that graph to use the monthly data, with a row for each year that allows you to compare the seasons. Note that the state-level drought data is also in the workbook as a data source.

Assignment Part 2

Use the knowledge that you've gained in the last two weeks about how to use Tableau more effectively to go back and fix/update/address some roadblocks that you ran into in any of the previous three labs. Address at least one roadblock, but ideally two. Illustrate your improved solution with a screenshot, and a discussion of what you did differently this time. Include a screenshot of the previous version so that it's easy to compare. (Your change should not be the same as what you did for the week 3 lab about improving color selection.)

Writeup

Submit a document in PDF format. An informal style is fine, but correct grammar and spelling are required. Send by email to tmm@cs.ubc.ca by 9am Tue Oct 13, with subject "JOURN Week 4".


Credits: Recreating News Visualization in Tableau was developed by Robert Kosara.
Tamara Munzner
Last modified: Mon Oct 12 20:15:30 PDT 2015